11th hour

Chapter 46

Dick Varick reached out for his wife, but she drew away. He said, “Ginny, you haven’t seen Marilyn in a long time. Listen, I brought her some money about eight months ago. She didn’t want me to tell you.”

“You saw her? And you didn’t tell me?”

“She was in bad shape, dear. She was high and talking crazy. She wouldn’t come home. I pleaded with her, but she wouldn’t let me get her any help. She said all she needed was a loan. I gave her a thousand bucks. She called us twice after that, so I knew she was okay.”

Ginny Varick put her hands to her mouth and then ran from the room.

Dick Varick stood, jammed his hands into his pants pockets, and walked to one of the glass walls. He looked out at the Japanese maples and the sharp shadows they cast across the back lawn. Then he turned to face me.

“I’m sorry I lied to you about not having seen her. I didn’t want to tell Ginny. And now I have, in the worst possible way.”

“So this drawing is of Marilyn?” I asked.

“Yes,” he said. “How did she die?”

“We don’t know, not yet.”

“You have to tell me what you know.”

“Come sit down,” I said.

Dick Varick returned to his chair and leaned forward with his hands pressing hard on his knees, his eyes on mine.

I had been dreading this moment. How do you tell parents that their daughter’s head had been removed from her body — and that you don’t know how she was killed, by whom, or even the physical location of her body?

“Some human remains were disinterred at the Ellsworth compound.”

As soon as I mentioned the Ellsworth compound, Varick became agitated. He interrupted me to tell me what he’d read in the papers and to ask if Marilyn was one of the victims of that crime.

I told him what little I knew.

I asked, “Did Marilyn ever mention Harry Chandler?”

“No. Is he responsible? Did that miserable bastard — ”

“I’m asking because her remains were found on his property. That’s all. Did Marilyn tell you or give you a sense that someone wanted to hurt her?”

“No, she said she was living with friends. Sergeant, I hardly knew my daughter when I saw her. All traces of the young woman I’d known and loved was gone. She was an addict. She wanted money for drugs. She didn’t even ask about her mother.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’d like the names of the friends you spoke with when you were looking for her.”

“She was thirty-three,” Varick said, typing names and contact information into his iPhone. I gave him my e-mail address and he sent the list to me. “She wasn’t a teenager,” Varick said. “I couldn’t call the police and have her brought home.”

“I understand.”

“Do you want me to come and identify her?”

“Contact the medical examiner,” I said. I wrote down the phone number on the back of my card, and then Dick Varick walked me to his front door.

He looked years older than he had only half an hour before, shaken, hopeless, the father of a murdered child.

I got into my car and tried to contain my own feelings — but I couldn’t do it. I drove down the block and halfway up the next one before I pulled over, put my head down on the steering wheel, and sobbed.